I seem to recall that it was the APWU which introduced the concept of PSE and NTFT into the negotiations. But I can’t find any documentation of same. Is my memory faulty ?

John Dennie
(retired MH)

Sorry, Mark. Hard to pass up the opportunity;) Thanks for your continued support/concern.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Help-save-our-United-States-Postal-Service/274848372536954

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Help-save-our-United-States-Postal-Service/274848372536954

‘You’ and others like you are exactly our problem. You’re ready to capitulate without a fight and accept whatever scraps Corporate offers in a contract the union should NEVER have accepted, much less had a part in penning. There’s a difference between accusations and facts. It’s not stone throwing if it’s the truth. I guess it’s hard to tell the difference while wearing blinders…

“It is clear that, as the Commission concluded, the amount of the discount that the Postal Service may offer for presorting is subject to the statute’s workshare discount limit, and the discount may not exceed the cost that the Postal Service avoids as a result of the presorting,” ruled Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh, dismissing the Postal Service petition for a review.

From the beginning of time, man was not an individualistic animal moving through the world autonomously. There has always been and there will always be a collective component to our better existence. There is no natural order that makes a rising tide lift all boats, only the acknowledgement of the necessity of a public order, of the essential nature of public goods and collective action, an understanding that our interests are not only individual but also interdependent will result in not just an equitable world but a sustainable world, a world that is not simply a chaotic race to be first.

Our nation is in dire straits because we have let the pendulum swing too far too the side of gross individualism and private interest. De Tocqueville recognized a uniquely American alchemy, while we have always believed in the power and integrity of individual action we were, in fact a nation committed to the idea of public communal action and participation. That balance has as it has been in other times in our past like the Gilded Age, corrupted. The current evidence of that is the lethargy and sclerosis of our institutions.

Many on the Right have a love affair with certain Austrian economists, among them Joseph Schumpeter who proposed the concept of “creative destruction” as a base economic principle. We’ve certainly heard that phrase during this so called postal crisis. The problem is that the Right in this country believes in the destruction of our institutions, particularly those that focus on public goods, but there is nothing creative or restorative about it; it is simply a prescription for a world in which the strongest beast wins. In a country of 300 million people that is an invitation to chaos, dissolution, and poverty. It is to co-opt the title of a popular text worshiped by the Right, a Road to Serfdom. The progress of the Enlightenment and particularly our Founding Fathers was the recognition that our individual interest and success was tied inextricably and irrevocably to our common bonds, to our recognition of ‘Us the People’ to an attempt to form a more perfect union, not as some would suggest today, tyranny through self-interested anarchy.

On a grand and large scale, those who understand our basic founding concepts must begin to recognize that we are very much in a fight for our basic existence. The crisis that confronts us is existential and we must recognize that our future prosperity and the renewal of our union and nation lies not in accepting the narrative of self-interest masquerading as freedom and rights, not in concessions to an economic agenda that reserves all benefit for the select few. We must find ways to unite, to organize, to express our individual voices as part of a grand chorus that recognizes that our institutions need to be renewed and restored, not destroyed and demeaned. At the same time, we must also recognize that institutions and the bureaucracies that are an inevitable part of them must be tended with attention and cared for like a garden. There are no permanent solutions because life itself is an ongoing enterprise. Our failures and threats today are not a result of a failed vision but of complacency and narrowed interest and focus.

There is a grander essential battle ahead for the very soul of our nation, but with respect to the battle that is directly before us the dissolution of a necessary and useful institution, the destruction of our national post, we must be brutally honest and clear eyed. No legislation that is currently proposed even by those that understands the challenge (and there are some like Mr. De Fazio and Mr. Sanders) will save the Postal Service and the positive public good that it represents. Nothing that is currently proposed or being discussed sufficiently addresses the agenda and direction that has been the prevailing wind for the last thirty years. Until and unless we recognize that; until and unless we admit that simply trying to end up with the least bad situations are merely an agonizingly and painfully slow death, unless we understand just how dire the current situation is, we will never be able to marshal the collective will and necessary resources to turn this situation around.

The APWU signed a contract that was an abject surrender; it was a victim’s response, a pleading not to be hit any more. The NALC places much of its fate in the hand of a Wall Street mover and shaker as if getting in bed with those who hold to a vision of America that marginalizes working people offers a path to success. The management organizations, the League and NAPUS blindly acted as quislings, sending their members to a predictable slaughter while deluding themselves that they had a voice, a seat at the table.

And what of others affected by this? The trade organizations that represent newspapers and periodicals would make separate deals to preserve their preferential rates, while failing to understand that the very underpinning of those rates; the philosophical basis of those rates is founded solidly under theories of public goods. The non-profits are perhaps even worse. Consumer organizations like AARP or other groups fail to understand the significance of what is happening. The postal network is an important and essential means of commerce for millions of Americans and if we privatize to otherwise undermine this network, then consumers will be subject to the whims of narrowly directed and profit oriented monopolies. And not just for things like package deliveries, but for basic economic functions like paying bills. Will those consumer groups simple hand the American public over to payday lenders and others who exist only for the purpose of extraction?

In my previous response, I wrote about the deterioration of labor in this country, but labor is not on an island by itself. American consumers, American small business, alternative institutions like credit unions, all of these groups and more have a common interest. A well paid labor force, people with benefits, with reasonable retirements with accessible and affordable health care, with a basic stake in the economy are the very customers that provide the income and sustenance for much of American business. Degrade labor – destroy the middle class and who will buy? Who will use the services or consume the goods? We are moving towards an economy where the very few at the top, where Wall Street and also Silicon Valley thrive by manipulation and subterfuge, by obfuscation and advantage, by capturing our institutions and buying our political processes.

No, Mr. Burrus, we don’t disagree at all. There is no natural order of things that is going to right what is increasingly and obviously very, very wrong. In order to do that, we must be painfully honest about the challenges and problems we confront and my response to your previous post was an attempt to make that clear. We must also be honest about our own failings; we must recognize that where the institutions that serve us in this fight, like the unions, have failed or become timid or have too easily accepted the conventional wisdom about our predicament and our economy. This so-called conventional wisdom is neither conventional nor wise and we must be painfully honest and reflective.

At this moment in history, we are in a fight for the very soul of this country. We are in a fight for the very existence of the American middle-class. I have said that what is happening to the Postal Service is the canary in the coalmine. We who believe in this fight, those who believe that what is happening to the Postal Service is not only wrong, but a fundamental abdication of basic founding American values, we are at the forefront of this fight.

The administration in Washington has washed its hands, effectively abandoned us. Congress is both feckless and dysfunctional and with the exception of a very few, either clearly against us or like Mr. Carper enablers and fellow travelers. The knowledge of this makes us angry and we have expressed that anger, but the solutions lie in organizing in finding and developing a community of interest, not just with labor but with all sorts of groups across the spectrum of American society and the American economy. Our Founders used recognition of common interest to promote a common vision, an understanding that those who will not stand together will hang separately. It’s past time we rediscovered the strength inherent in solidarity. It’s past time that we restored faith in our institutions that we insisted that they function well. It’s past time that we allowed groups bathed in self-interest and self-indulgence to co-opt the rhetoric and principles that made this country a beacon. The Tea Party and those who do their bidding in Congress are termites, destroyers who would gnaw at and undermine the very foundations of America in furtherance of not rights, but raw unadulterated privilege.

As for this postal crisis, it is past time that all of the employee organizations joined together and found a way to speak with a common voice. It is past time that we actually joined together and fought to establish a community of interest that we sought to also join with the American people as a whole, with consumers and consumer groups, with industry groups that are interested in a truly solid and sustainable postal network that offers broad public benefit.

Yes Mr. Burrus, I agree. It is time we stopped lobbying, stopped playing the same old cynical games and recognized that we are in a fight for our lives that this country is in a fight for its very soul.

I’m afraid we live in a society of sheep. But I am not one. Many of my co-workers are not. They think about what is being said and done about postal reform, and they don’t like it. Our managers at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17107 as of late are being questioned about why they are telling workers to do tasks that are against the proper handling of the mail, and the service to the customer. Management wants their paychecks and the union wants it’s dues, but what they are telling the “average” worker are now being questioned. The employees are in doubt. Questioning the right of authority.

I don’t think BIG Government should be involved in making Postal discissions. We have our own watch dog organizations, that if we not being influenced by money and being corrupt, would see that the Post Office can stand on it’s own, serving the customer properly, and making the work place an environment of productivity.

Lets clean up our own Postal “Service” not “business.”

Thank you Mr. Burrus.

I’ve always felt that we deserve cabinet level representation and not the nepotic demagoguery we find ourselves stuck with in former clerk and all around sorry excuse for a PMG Pat ‘keepupthegoodwork’ Donahoe. Having said that, I’d like to start a White House petition to that effect.

Remove Donahoe as PMG, reinstitute the Dept. of the Postal Service and have the President, with the approval of the Senate, appoint a Secretary of the United States Postal Service. I feel that would go a long way to instilling something resembling accountability at the top. This individual could also turn and ask the Secretary of the Treasury where the hell our $300+ billion went…

With that in mind, what do you say, Mr. Jamison? We could do a LOT worse than you as SecUSPS. We deserve a LOT better than our current clueless ‘leader’. If not, your immeasurable contributions to date are most appreciated, none-the-less. Thank you most sincerely for your unwavering conviction. With just a few of you at corporate we might not find ourselves in the mess we’re in now.

You ask, “What is Congressman Issa waiting for?” and I respond that he’s waiting for the same thing that PMG Donahoe is which is the degradation and dissolution of the network and the system to an irreparable degree. Donahoe and the BOG say that they want reform, they even appear to plead for it at times but the obvious fact is that the status quo serves their interests and the interests of the privatizers better than any legislation possibly could. With each passing day labor is weakened a little further, the network is degraded a little more, and the public becomes inured to the inevitable.
Legislation actually takes the issue off the table. The presumption is that once legislation is passed, and we have a fairly clear general framework as you indicate above, that we’ll not hear of further postal crises for some period of time. Once legislation is passed Donahoe and the BOG have less room to maneuver, less ability to use a crisis to roll back the the institutional and public qualities of the Postal Service and postal system.
Those who wish to see a less public postal network have been around since the PRA. PMG Potter’s 2002 Transformation Plan was little more than a wish list for a privatized postal system. The current “crisis” which is nothing more than an accounting fraud manipulated by the opportunistic for fairly obvious ends serves its purpose much more than any comprehensive reform legislation ever could.

What is happening to the Postal Service is the culmination of thirty years or more of an assault on the basic integrity of our public institutions. President Reagan’s famous aphorism that the government wasn’t the solution but the problem may have been a facetious attempt at humor but a great majority of the Right in this country take it quite seriously. A significant portion of the Republican Party believes that government and the institutions of government are, in fact, the enemy. Voices from LaPierre to Nordquist undermine “We the People” in favor of me, me, me.
Labor has been marginalized and vilified in this country; private sector unions represent 7% of the labor force, lower than in generations. And with the evisceration of Labor we’re also seeing a constant assault on public goods, an elimination of basic consumer protections, and a fundamental questioning of principles that many thought settled by New Deal response to the Great Depression. We’ve regressed and a whole political party celebrates that while the other party consistently concedes and shifts rightward.

The current crisis of the Postal Service is a canary in a coalmine. It isn’t about a viable “business model” or realization of technological disruption. Pure and simple it is an attempt to undermine a basic concept about the value of public goods; it is a sell off of public assets to the detriment of the greater whole. Too many have refused to recognize what’s going on, the unions and employee organizations have, more often than not, accepted the basic premise that the Postal Service is an anachronism or simply fought a holding action. Consumer groups like AARP have failed to see how the degradation of the postal network exposes millions of vulnerable Americans. This isn’t about saving the Postal Service, this is about our basic social contract, the assaults on Social Security, Medicare and government generally are all part of this.
The Republicans clearly see this fight. I’m not so sure the Democrats do. Postal management has been endorsing privatization for a couple generations. It’s a piece of a much greater puzzle and some sort of compromise, comprehensive legislation is only, at this point slow down the juggernaut intent on undermining all the gains of the New Deal.
Each day without legislation allows Donahoe to weaken the institutional mortar a little more. Each day without legislation gives Issa and others an opportunity to truly defeat this crucial institution. The problem is that those who are crying for legislation don’t understand this and will ultimately settle for something that permanently enshrines a rollback of our basic principles.

Now we go back to congressinal oversight for funding…..Guess what they furlough Federal Workers, Why not Postal Employees…say every 2nd and 3rd Wednesday of every Month

If they eliminate Saturday delivery then they need to offer Postal CSRS employees an incentive that is worthwhile taking. Other Federal agencies offered $25,000 which in my opinion is NOT enough. Postal employees have been taking it in the shorts much longer and harder than other Federal agencies. Offering $25,000 and maybe a couple of years added to service…I would leave in a heart beat! This will open up more positions for the newbies at a lower payscale.

They need to put the Postal Service back under Federal like we used to be and eliminate the Unions (sorry Unions).

Just my thoughts folks!

40th Anniversary of the 1970 Postal Strike